WASHINGTON — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently added Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" to its list of "great" films. That puts it right up there with "Casablanca," "Annie Hall," "Schindler's List" and 70 or so other all-timers.
Some movie buffs are wondering why the list does not (as yet) include such epics as "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "It Happened One Night."
I'm wondering: Why isn't Attorney General John Ashcroft doing what he can to put Eastwood behind bars?
You will recall that "Unforgiven" portrays, in unforgettably graphic terms, a number of murders.
And if you're thinking that I've gone right out of my mind, let me tell you that I don't really want Eastwood in jail. I don't even want to talk about "Unforgiven." What I really want to talk about is Ashcroft's official outrage over virtual child pornography. But I'm afraid if I'd said that straight out, you might have clamped your hands over your ears and refused to hear a thing I was saying.
Just as Ashcroft has clamped his hands over his ears, refusing to hear what the Supreme Court said in overturning a 1996 federal law aimed at ending the traffic in computer-generated child pornography. That legislation prescribed jail terms for the sale, distribution, possession or conveyance of images that "appear to be" of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Ashcroft's people are already at work drafting legislation to undo the awful effect of the ruling.
The rationale for legislating against child pornography had been that, whether or not children are harmed by those viewing, distributing or e-mailing the stuff, the children used in making it are harmed. Moreover, the mere existence of child porn using live models is evidence that children have been harmed.
It is for similar reasons that "snuff movies" were unlawful — not because of the execrable taste of the films or the possibility that they might have led a viewer to antisocial behavior but because their very production involved murder.
The whole argument falls apart in the case of computer-generated porn — or of violent movies.
Which is why I started the column with Clint Eastwood. Everybody understands that people aren't really killed in his movies, even if a few among us might be tempted to deal with our real-life problems the way he deals with his fictional ones. Some people think some Eastwood movies are too violent and refuse to see them. Others think they're inappropriate for young children. But nobody thinks that making them is, or ought to be, a crime.
But how can you sit there and defend child porn, virtual or otherwise?
That's the question that gets close to where I think Ashcroft is. He is so sure that we'd all be better off if this trash didn't exist that he wants to zap it out of existence. But since the depraved people who make, distribute and take pleasure in this wretched stuff won't voluntarily accede to his wishes, he'd invoke the force of law.
It's a reaction that is more dangerous to our constitutional liberties than he recognizes, though it is well short of another reaction one hears: Anyone who would defend the constitutionality of kid porn, even computer-generated kid porn, must desire its existence.
Well, I don't desire its existence, even though I wonder if the antisocial impact of its existence is as bad as some people claim. I mean, are pedophiles more likely to use porn to get revved for attacks on children or to use it as sublimation? I'm not sure we know the answer to the same question with regard to adult pornography. Does viewing "dirty" pictures make you more, or less, prone to commit sex crimes?
But those are questions for researchers. America's chief law-enforcement officer ought to understand the difference between legal sufferance and condonation, between saying a thing is bad and saying it ought to be unlawful.
It's OK to have a problem with gratuitous cinematic violence — even to suspect deep down that such simulated violence has a deleterious effect on the society.
But let's not put Clint Eastwood in jail.
William Raspberry's e-mail address is willrasp@washpost.com.